I was diagnosed with PXE in 2006 at the age of 49. I went to bed one night and woke up the next day and had color negative vision in one eye. A portion of my retina had been blown away by a major bleed. Three months later, I developed a cataract in my other eye and after the surgery to remove it, started having bleeds in that eye.
I grew up in South Florida, where I had a diet very rich in seafood and fresh fruits and vegetables. At the age of 6 I moved to Houston and then consumed a diet of beef and potatoes and processed foods. In my 20's, I returned to North Florida and lived a very stressful and a labor intensive life. My diet consisted of fast and convienient food, and it seemed like I lived on Pepsi. By the time I was 40 I was suffering from severe osteoarthritis and had chronic widespread body pain. After a car accident I was left with debilitating neck and back pain. Doctors did nothing to help me so I started researching pain and went on an anti-inflammatory vegetarian diet. Exactly three months after starting the diet I woke up blind in one eye. It took the doctors three more months to figure out I had PXE. Since the diagnosis I've tried many different diets and so far the only things I've discovered is there are certain foods that within minutes of consuming them I can see a bleed start in my eye, for example, I seem to have a problem with Omega 3 fatty acids. If I eat something with olive oil I see the bleed start in my eye, if I eat collard greens, I see it start as well. I can eat butter with no bleeds but it fogs my vision out, I can eat the "banned" trans fats with no problem in my eye. I have found that Vitamin C and citrus bioflavonoids lessen the fluid in my eye. This is just a few of the examples I have found with food.
When initially researching about PXE on the web, I read a study that said "proinflammatory cytokines MAY help regulate PXE." So I feel my vegetarian/anti-imflammatory diet may have worsened and inflicted my legal blindness. I now try and eat a balanced diet slightly higher in lean protein. I also had, for many years steroid injections in many different joints, now I just suffer in chronic pain and try to keep the fluid and bleeds to a minimum in my one eye. So is being a vegetarian good? I feel my eyesight was lost due to a vegetarian diet. But we as individuals will all have different experiences with this.